[Lightning] The Lightning Address

[ndalliard]

today i saw a new development in the lightning space: https://lightningaddress.com/

tldr: send sats to the known email address format

it is a combination of lnurl and a http server. some people who use letsencrypt might know the .well-known/acme-challenge endpoint to get certificates for your website. lightningaddress uses the .well-known/lnurlp/username endpoint to generate lnurl invoices

i am looking forward to provide such functionality to my friends and family - this is exciting. what do you think?

i am a little bit afraid that it will be centralised like email is today, that is why running your own lightning node seems a good thing to do

[DaveF]

Looks interesting, wish I had to time get my lightning nodes back up to see how well it works with a self hosted solution.

Will be interesting to see if it takes off. Since it's open source I don't see it being centralized, there will always be people running it especially businesses, if it never gets popular I can see it having only one or 2 providers.

Unlike a lot of things that have cropped up this one looks like it does have good potential.

-Dave

[Carlton Banks]

I wouldn't use it or promote it.

• email infrastructure has been on the path to centralization for years, it's a cartel now in essence
• almost everyone uses the monopolists email service

LNURL will probably end up unsupported anyway (lightning devs are coming up with a different standard), so using this protocol means supporting 2 other protocols that are on their way to obsolescence

I realize that there may not be any privacy problems depending on how it's implemented, but I'm still not interested; it's using a creaky centralized system that is otherwise on the way out

[BlackHatCoiner]

I realize that there may not be any privacy problems depending on how it's implemented, but I'm still not interested; it's using a creaky centralized system that is otherwise on the way out

Just an observation.

People would sooner or later use centralized solutions or formulated more properly: less decentralized solutions. It is a matter of time until the merchant prefers to receive their sats by only giving an email instead. It'd a benefit for their customers.

If they insist on the decentralized ideology and also want from their users to send sats via email, they could setup their own email server and be at none's dependence.

[ndalliard]

just to be clear: this has nothing to do with email! just the known format of an email address is reused, maybe my tldr was badly formulated... sorry about that. edited to make it clearer, i hope

[Carlton Banks]

just to be clear: this has nothing to do with email! just the known format of an email address is reused, maybe my tldr was badly formulated... sorry about that. edited to make it clearer, i hope

right, but any email supplier can use this API, and will no doubt re-write their terms & conditions so that they can (and their business model involves selling user data already)


this is solving a problem that doesn't exist, and potentially undoing any privacy benefits of Lightning to boot. You can bet the most glitzily advertised, simple, colorful implementation will be surreptitiously funded by some hedge fund, bank and/or government spies.

invoices as QR codes or URI's are just as easy, and it's much easier to retain privacy while using them

[ndalliard]

i was yesterday listening in the bi-weekly c-lightning dev meeting and rusty explained something similar to the lightning address using bolt12. his implementation would only need to access the webserver once (to get the lightning node associated with the identifier like me@domain.com), can be proofed by a signature (if i understood it correctly) and after the first round only the lightning network itself will be used. using the lightning address proposed on the site mentioned in op, you would always request and get invoices over the webserver

i like how rusty thinks about this topic, still using the web / the existence of email addresses to jumpstart and after that only relying on the lightning network itself - what do you think?

[ndalliard]

here is a little video which shows lightningaddress in action:


https://twitter.com/andreneves/status/1431411673915592709

even though carlton banks thinks qr codes and uri's are fine to use. i find it easier to just enter an email address instead of scanning a qr code or entering a weird looking uri. and i am a technical person, i would assume emails are easier to use for "normies"

[fillippone]

<...>
even though carlton banks thinks qr codes and uri's are fine to use. i find it easier to just enter an email address instead of scanning a qr code or entering a weird looking uri. and i am a technical person, i would assume emails are easier to use for "normies"

I am a little bit late on this.
I discovered this thread while updating my:
Lightning Network Observer

I would agree with ndalliard here: user experience is still difficult for most people.
Adding an option to send payments using an interface as simple as an email address (albeit the backend is quite different), would only make things easier for a lot of people.

Advanced users can still fiddle with the more privacy-oriented methods if they wish.
This is the beauty of the opt-in systems.

[LoyceV]

If they insist on the decentralized ideology and also want from their users to send sats via email, they could setup their own email server and be at none's dependence.

Those days are long gone, if you run your own email server nowadays, your emails will likely end up in spam folders.

i run my own mailserver and my emails don't land in spam folders... are you talking from first experience? if so, maybe i can help

I gave up (and don't need it anymore).

[ndalliard]

If they insist on the decentralized ideology and also want from their users to send sats via email, they could setup their own email server and be at none's dependence.

Those days are long gone, if you run your own email server nowadays, your emails will likely end up in spam folders.

i run my own mailserver and my emails don't land in spam folders... are you talking from first experience? if so, maybe i can help

[pooya87]

even though carlton banks thinks qr codes and uri's are fine to use. i find it easier to just enter an email address instead of scanning a qr code or entering a weird looking uri. and i am a technical person, i would assume emails are easier to use for "normies"

I can't remember that last time I actually entered an Email address by hand. I either have the address in my address book or if it is new I'll just copy & paste the string or if it is clickable I click it. In other words it is exactly the same thing I would do to an LN BECH32 address (have in address book or copy or click).

Saying "using Email is easier" you are just saying that "Email is a human readable string" since it is treated the same way as an address. Not to mention that sometimes Email addresses are hard to write down by hand too, your own address is 21 characters long and that's a very simple one!

[ndalliard]

Saying "using Email is easier" you are just saying that "Email is a human readable string" ...

exactly. humans are creatures of habit. and you may not like it, but humans in general are more used to the form of an email than a random looking string. but in the end we will see if the lightning address is something that will find bigger adoption. also what fillippone said: it is opt-in, you are free not to use it. but i also like what rusty is doing with bolt12, looks similar to what the lightning address achieves, but with less dependency on the webserver (only needed once initially, for the lightning address with every transaction the webserver is needed)

[pooya87]

exactly. humans are creatures of habit.

OK. One of the habits they have is clicking links. For example when they buy stuff online there is a link they click that directs them to the payment page where they enter their info and pay. Why not do the same with bitcoin and why complicate things with involving a centralized service and an Email?

Like this: pay me 0.1BTC
It is easy to use, it is readable and when you click it (assuming you have a bitcoin wallet installed that supports URL:bitcoin protocol) it will open it and fill in every information with a transaction ready to be signed.

[NotATether]

OK. One of the habits they have is clicking links. For example when they buy stuff online there is a link they click that directs them to the payment page where they enter their info and pay. Why not do the same with bitcoin and why complicate things with involving a centralized service and an Email?

Like this: pay me 0.1BTC
It is easy to use, it is readable and when you click it (assuming you have a bitcoin wallet installed that supports URL:bitcoin protocol) it will open it and fill in every information with a transaction ready to be signed.

I believe Google Chrome and possibly some other browsers present a dialog asking you whether you want to open links like that outside of Chrome, and since the default button is "Cancel", it deters a lot of people from opening apps outside the browser, and this includes wallets that are trying to send BTC.

Also I don't particularly recommend this approach, a vulnerability hiding within browsers might allow for maliciously modifying the program arguments before they are sent to the program.

[pooya87]

Also I don't particularly recommend this approach, a vulnerability hiding within browsers might allow for maliciously modifying the program arguments before they are sent to the program.

Everyone must double and triple check everything in their wallet's Send window before they actually sign the transaction and broadcast the transaction to the network. This is regardless of the method they are using. That is why I disagree with using this as a reason for not using this method since any other method (copy and pasting, or using QR) can have similar vulnerabilities that lead to a modified variables.

[PrimeNumber7]

today i saw a new development in the lightning space: https://lightningaddress.com/

tldr: send sats to the known email address format

it is a combination of lnurl and a http server. some people who use letsencrypt might know the .well-known/acme-challenge endpoint to get certificates for your website. lightningaddress uses the .well-known/lnurlp/username endpoint to generate lnurl invoices

According to the documentation, for all intents and purposes, you must be hosting your own email server in order to use this program. You cannot use popular email providers such as gmail (unless such email provider decides to offer this type of service in the future).

I don't see many email providers offering this type of service due to the increased risk of account hijackings. The majority of email services are intended for personal use, and this type of service is really for business users.

[ABCbits]

today i saw a new development in the lightning space: https://lightningaddress.com/

tldr: send sats to the known email address format

it is a combination of lnurl and a http server. some people who use letsencrypt might know the .well-known/acme-challenge endpoint to get certificates for your website. lightningaddress uses the .well-known/lnurlp/username endpoint to generate lnurl invoices

According to the documentation, for all intents and purposes, you must be hosting your own email server in order to use this program.

I assume you're referring to this image where the the website (domain.com) must return desired JSON response?

You cannot use popular email providers such as gmail (unless such email provider decides to offer this type of service in the future).

I agree, even email provider who accept Bitcoin is unlikely to offer this service.

[ndalliard]

According to the documentation, for all intents and purposes, you must be hosting your own email server in order to use this program. You cannot use popular email providers such as gmail (unless such email provider decides to offer this type of service in the future).

no you don't have to host your own email server to offer a lightning address. it only uses the known format of an email address, besides that, it has nothing to do with email or email hosting or email servers. you are right, that gmail doesn't offer lightning address atm

I don't see many email providers offering this type of service due to the increased risk of account hijackings. The majority of email services are intended for personal use, and this type of service is really for business users.

i disagree about that last part. we are basically talking about sending bitcoin, that is personal

[Syke]

Like this: pay me 0.1BTC
It is easy to use, it is readable and when you click it (assuming you have a bitcoin wallet installed that supports URL:bitcoin protocol) it will open it and fill in every information with a transaction ready to be signed.

That works because bitcoin addresses don't expire. But you shouldn't do that.  A wise man once said:

it's best to use bitcoin addresses only once.

You can't do that with Lightning invoices because they do expire. Hence Lightning Addresses, don't expire and don't expose your privacy.